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I nod again.

Holden purses his lips, before adding, “Toren said you were his best friend.”

A shiver works down my spine, eyes fluttering before I grip the table in front of me.

“He said that?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Oh.” I feel a little warm. “Yeah.”

“Is that true?” he asks. “Was he your best friend too? Or was it one-sided? I won’t tell.”

It’s a joke, his smoky chuckle in my ear, before he backs off and picks up his pencil, twirling it between his fingers as he looks over at me.

“No— No, Toren . . . he—he was my best friend.”

“Just that?”

No. He was— He was everything. My first kiss, my first everything, my only everything. Toren was just . . . everything.

He still is.

“Hmm.”

We go back to quietly working for a moment, but I can’t focus. It doesn’t help that I’m actually working on math and it’s not going well. Toren helps, checks over my shoulder in class often enough, and I’ve at least caught up to last week’s lesson, but I’m still struggling to get through even just notes.

“You really look like you want to ask me something.”

I want to ask for help. But instead my mouth opens too fast, words spilling. “Does Toren have a girlfriend?”

Holden shakes his head. “No.”

There’s a blast of pure relief. No part of me thought he did, not after he touched me. Toren bleeds loyalty. It’s in his very soul.

“A boyfriend?” I ask. Just to be sure.

This form of the question makes Holden’s eyebrows pop up and cheeks flush. “Uh, no. He doesn’t.” He looks like he wants to say more. To ask me something else, but he bites down on his tongue and doesn’t speak further.

I nod. “Okay.”

I try to stay focused, but the fog won’t disappear. It keeps ghosting over my brain, like this invisible hand slowly pulling me from myself until I’m hovering and watching myself slump farther and farther into my chair.

“You okay?” a voice asks, distant for a second before I look up at him.

“Hmm?”

“I asked if you were okay,” Holden says, drifting more into focus. My mind still feels too far away.

Once, I’d described this feeling as drowning, the first time I met with Dr. Winthrop—Carson’s father. My dad had hovered like an inescapable presence, daring me to speak incorrectly, which I apparently had. It wasn’t that I was trying to upset him. I just wanted to be honest. To show him why I’d been so tired and lost.

That I didn’t mean to do it.

But—

“Hey,” Holden says, his voice calmer, softer somehow, but his hands are cold against my skin as he presses them to either side of my face, directing my eyes to his. “Maybe we should stop for the day?”

“Yeah.” I nod, agreeing, though the last thing I want to do is leave and be alone again. But it’s selfish to ask him to stay for that reason alone, and I can’t think of anything else. Tongue-tied I say, “Good idea.”